Maps and the Writing of Space in Early Modern England and Ireland [Hardcover]

Maps make the world visible, but they also obscure, distort, idealize. This wide-ranging study traces the impact of cartography on the changing cultural meanings of space, offering a fresh analysis of the mental and material mapping of early modern England and Ireland. Combining cartographic history with critical cultural studies and literary analysis, it examines the construction of social and political space in maps, in cosmography and geography, in historical and political writing, and in the literary works of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Spenser and Drayton.List of Figures Plate Section Acknowledgements Introduction: The Cartographic Transaction PART I: MEASUREMENTS Mathematics of the World Land Measuring: An Upstart Art Surveying Ireland PART II: CARTOGRAPHIES The Whole World at One View Mapping the Nation The Image of Ireland PART III: NARRATIVES Imaginary Journeys: Describing Britain The Poetics of National Space Groundless Fictions: Writing Irish Space Index

'Many books aspire to be interdisciplinary but few achieve a genuine fusion

of different approaches to a body of material. Bernard Klein is a rare

exception as he moves from nation to nation, and text to text, with admirable ease, compelling the reader to follow his insights through to the conclusion. This is a major work on Renaissance conceptions of space and deserves to be read by all students of the history, literature and geography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.' - Andrew Hadfield, Professor of English, University of Wales, Aberystwyth

'...lucid, stimulating and revealing.' - Wasafiri

'This is...a rich and deeply engaging book - a genuine work of interdisciplinary scholarship from which everyone interested in early modern culture, politics, literature, and, indeed, science, will have much to learn.' - Andrew Murphy, University of St Andrews, Early Modern Literary Studies

'...fascinating reading...l3)